Worst Investment Manuever ever

[RonBoyd]

Apple's lost founder: Jobs, Woz and Wayne

That agreement gave him a 10 percent ownership stake in Apple, a position that would be worth about $22 billion today if Wayne had held onto it.

But he didn't.

Afraid that Jobs' wild spending and Woz's recurrent "flights of fancy" would cause Apple to flop, Wayne decided to abdicate his role as adult-in-chief and bailed out after 12 days. Terrified to be the only one of the three founders with assets that creditors could seize, he sold back his shares for $800.

 

[kmoeini]

This was so sad...especially the fact that he's in such an impoverished situation now.

 

[LARS]

Reminds me of poor old Pete Best getting kicked out of the Beatles to be replaced by Ringo Starr. Better to be lucky than smart...

 

[oilspill]

No one should live in the past. For every juicy Apple to make you rich there's countless rotten ones to wipe you and your family out.

 

[RonBoyd]

No one should live in the past. For every juicy Apple to make you rich there's countless rotten ones to wipe you and your family out.

Pun intended?

 

[RunningBum]

Maybe he missed multi-millions...or maybe with him in the picture Apple takes a different turn and flops?

 

[Spanky]

Life is not about money.

 

[audreyh1]

Maybe he missed multi-millions...or maybe with him in the picture Apple takes a different turn and flops?

The latter outcome was much more likely. Probably best him out of the way.

Besides - no one in their right mind would ever want to be Steve Jobs' "boss".

Still, nothing kept him from investing in Apple stock just a few years later. He still could have come out with multi-millions.

So you definitely have to fault him for also not having the "vision thing".

Audrey

 

[ERD50]

Actually, his reasons for getting out seemed very sound. We shouldn't confuse the results of a decision with the soundness of the decision.

Not wearing a seat belt is a bad decision. But if the 5 seconds it took to buckle up meant that an hour later you were precisely in the path of a car that ran a red light and smacks you, that doesn't change the decision soundness.

Ross Perot lost a ton of money from his investment in NeXT - that was the company that Steve Jobs formed after getting kicked out of Apple by John Scully. Same story, different ending. Well, I assume a different ending, not sure exactly. Apple 'bought' NeXT and turned the NeXTstep O/S that they developed into OSX. Some view it as NeXT 'bought' Apple for a negative $400 million, which I think is closer to the truth. But I think Perot was out with a big loss by then.

I wonder what that French guy is up to these days, ER? (yep, pretty much...)

Jean-Louis Gassée - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

-ERD50

 

[Onward]

Nobody mentioned the guy who sold DOS to Bill Gates for $10,000?

 

[eridanus]

Nobody mentioned the guy who sold DOS to Bill Gates for $10,000?

1.075 million after the lawsuit.

 

[M Paquette]

Apple 'bought' NeXT and turned the NeXTstep O/S that they developed into OSX. Some view it as NeXT 'bought' Apple for a negative $400 million, which I think is closer to the truth.

Heh. From a banned-at-Apple T-shirt:

Mr. Perot and some others didn't do so well. As I recall their investments at $20/share paid out at $10/share in the buyout.

 

[HFWR]

With a net worth estimated at $3.5b, I don't think Mr. Perot is eating Little Friskies from a can...

 

[Nords]

Life is not about money.

Easy to say when we have enough...

1.075 million after the lawsuit.

Considering Gates' BASIC reputation, let alone DOS, I think the seller laughed all the way to the bank. Twice.

I've read a number of books on the early days of Apple, Microsoft, McDonald's, and other current Megacorps. One common aspect of their histories is that if you came across them even a year or two after the IPO you still would've run away screaming, or sold at the first 10% uptick. I include Berkshire Hathaway in that characterization.

 

[RonBoyd]

Life is not about money.

Yeah, but... isn't there something about "whatever is in second place"?

 

[Onward]

1.075 million after the lawsuit.

I never knew there was a lawsuit. On what basis did he win? Still, maybe cold comfort, since $1m is miniscule compared to total DOS revenues?

One common aspect of their histories is that if you came across them even a year or two after the IPO you still would've run away screaming

Microsoft, its early products, and subsequent massive success, is one of the main things that convinced me it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to pick hugely successful stocks early, except by blind luck. I worked closely with many MS products in the 80's, and no one in his right mind would have bought that stock. MS Word was vastly inferior to WordPerfect. Excel was vastly inferior to 123. Visual Studio was vastly inferior to Borland C++. DOS was vastly inferior to just about all other OSes. None of MS's products, to my knowledge, was a market leader, except for DOS, which everyone knew was a joke.

I don't know what kind of person would have bought MSFT in the 80s. Either a complete genius or a complete idiot, or maybe someone who had never had any experience with any of the products.

 

[Spanky]

Microsoft, its early products, and subsequent massive success, is one of the main things that convinced me it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to pick hugely successful stocks early, except by blind luck. I worked closely with many MS products in the 80's, and no one in his right mind would have bought that stock. MS Word was vastly inferior to WordPerfect. Excel was vastly inferior to 123. Visual Studio was vastly inferior to Borland C++. DOS was vastly inferior to just about all other OSes. None of MS's products, to my knowledge, was a market leader, except for DOS, which everyone knew was a joke.

Product superiority itself is not sufficient. MSFT has the marketing power and dominance in PC OS and Office Suite that all applications can communicate with each other.

 

[ERD50]

Heh. From a banned-at-Apple T-shirt:

heh-heh-heh - Yep, I suppose that wouldn't do much for helping the two cultures merge together at HQ. The whole Apple/Jobs/Next/OSX timeline is quite the twisted path. Hollywood writers aren't good enough to come up with that script on their own.

-ERD50

 

[jIMOh]

I never knew there was a lawsuit. On what basis did he win? Still, maybe cold comfort, since $1m is miniscule compared to total DOS revenues?



Microsoft, its early products, and subsequent massive success, is one of the main things that convinced me it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to pick hugely successful stocks early, except by blind luck. I worked closely with many MS products in the 80's, and no one in his right mind would have bought that stock. MS Word was vastly inferior to WordPerfect. Excel was vastly inferior to 123. Visual Studio was vastly inferior to Borland C++. DOS was vastly inferior to just about all other OSes. None of MS's products, to my knowledge, was a market leader, except for DOS, which everyone knew was a joke.

I don't know what kind of person would have bought MSFT in the 80s. Either a complete genius or a complete idiot, or maybe someone who had never had any experience with any of the products.

I work in software industry, and one thing which is true, regardless of application

its better to be FIRST bringing a product to market
and its better to have a good SALES strategy or sales team

than it does to have a good product.

I work with CAD software quite a bit, and the first products to emerge with new technology tend to be leaders, even if the products which come out 1-2 years later are easier to use, more stable, or just plain better.

VHS vs Beta... beta was better, but VHS kicked its butt
and the list goes on and on

 

[ERD50]

VHS vs Beta... beta was better, but VHS kicked its butt
and the list goes on and on

Your earlier statements have merit, but this VHS/Beta thing is a commonly referenced distortion.

Beta was 'better' in terms of video quality - granted.

But, when VHS came out, Beta was still limited in recording time on one tape (I forget the details) - VHS could record longer. Consumers decided *that* was 'better'. And wasn't Beta first?

'Better' is not one-dimensional. AAIF/WAV/FLAC are 'better' than mp3 in sound quality, but if you can only fit 10 songs on your player versus 100, you might decide that mp3 is 'better' for that application. And it might be 'good enough'.

-ERD50